I approve only because if I object to it, I object for reasons I don't know if I understand. Do people hate the idea of 10 Worst Picture nominees because the votes get spread out more? Say, for example, a movie would get first place against 4 others. If you add in 5 more, those 5 might take away votes from that one movie and change the winner. Is that why most of you object?

GTAhater, I am going to try and explain why i am against 10 nominees, but i have to warn you that i only had less than 3 hours of sleep tonight (so my thoughts might come over as not all that clearly)

I am against 10 nominees in the Worst Picture-category because of two reasons:

1) The amount of movies on the nomination-ballot will increase which makes it... What's the word... The English equivelant of the Dutch words/terms "onoverzichtelijk" or "het overzicht verliezen" (forgive me people.. I am sleep deprived)

2) I also fear that voters will choose more the mixed-reviewed big blockbuster titles over the badly reviewed Box-Office Bombs (imaging a list filled with films like last years Twilight Eclipse....). Leaving a mark on the creditabillity of the Razzies

It's a bad idea for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a worse one for us. I have pointed out in the past that from a mathematical standpoint, even 5 nominees can create unintentional winners unless you employ a weighted voting system. Adding 5 more makes voting utter chaos for us. The Academy is going to find in the future that 10 nominees is going to lead to a lot of strange winners, and they have close to 6000 voting members. That is more than we have by nearly an order of magnitude.

The suggestion that Skyline would have made it last year is probably flawed. It didn't appear on the initial voting ballot, and it wouldn't necessarily have made it into the final 10. Further, the intial nominating ballot would have to be expanded to at least 15-20 films, several of which wouldn't be deserving.

Ultimately, if we expanded our Worst Picture to 10 films, based upon the size of our membership, a film could end up "winning" with as few as 70 votes. Since a lot of our voting members probably don't end up watching all the nominated films, odds are high that movies are going to end up winning based upon name recognition over being truly deserving. In other words, this year we might well have granted Miguel his wet dream of handing the trophy to Twlight not because most of us thought it was particularly bad, but just because a lot of members heard more about it than the other films on the ballot.

Addendum: Not to belabor a point, but just to clarify a term: AMPAS and the Razzies employ a voting system where there is a slate of movies on the ballot, and members vote for one film. A weighted system, which is probably more representative of voters opinions allows voters to rank preferences. It is similar to how votes are cast for the Heisman Trophy, as one example. Say that there is a list of 10 movies on the ballot. Each voter might make 5 selections, with their top choice receiving 5 points, their second receiving 4 points and so on. Ultimately, the winner is going to be the film that receives the most first or second place votes. Under this system, name recognition tends to get factored out. A film like Twilight might end up getting votes on a lot of ballots, but if they are predominately 4th or 5th place votes, it would get swamped by a film like The Last Airbender which would have probably received lots of first and second place votes.

Nine times out of ten, in art as in life, there is no truth to be discovered, only an error to be exposed.--H.L. Menken

If I may make one further point, Head Razz offers a Lifetime membership, which permits a member to add 55 names to the membership for the $500 contribution. Since our voting is now done predominately by email, it isn't all that difficult to create 55 email addresses, which effectively permits one member a lot of voting power. Since, as I noted above, adding 5 more nominees to the final ballot potentially drops the threshold of victory to about 70 votes, a situation could be created where one indivual would be dangerously close to deciding the "winner" every year. If someone was enthusiastic enough to buy 2 Lifetime memberships, they would effectively buy a voting block that would be extremely difficult for the rest of the membership to override.

The initial ballots still go out by mail, but I wouldn't have much problem getting 55 friends, co-workers and family members to permit me to offer their addresses, and simply give me the ballots when they arrived. So by increasing the ballot to 10, you are creating the double edged sword of splitting the vote and offering the opportunity for someone to effectively buy the right to name the winner.

Nine times out of ten, in art as in life, there is no truth to be discovered, only an error to be exposed.--H.L. Menken

Guys,of course having 10 nominees could be flawed. But it's not like it's perfect right now. A lot of times people disagree with our "winners."

It's true that our Voting Members may not watch every nominee, and that the "winners" could win by only a few votes. But that has more to do with the voters, and a system that allows anyone to be a voter.

Originally posted by Vheid

The amount of movies on the nomination-ballot will increase which makes it... What's the word... The English equivelant of the Dutch words/terms "onoverzichtelijk" or "het overzicht verliezen"

There's a difference between the Oscars doing ten Best Pictures and the Razzies doing ten Worst Pictures. The number of Oscar voters goes well into the thousands, while Razzie voters are only in the hundreds. As saturnwatcher said, 600-700 votes split ten ways could result in a least deserving movie getting the award ... and I refuse to make Miguel's wet dream come true (if saturnwatcher can say it, so can I). Considering the amount of sequels and remakes being made nowadays, the Worst Sequel, Etc. category makes for an equally important category that could substitute any deserving movie that dodges Worst Picture, since chances are that said movie will be listed in both categories. Any Razzie win is a win for Razzie voters.

As for the Oscars, let's face it, be it five Best Picture contenders or ten of them, it ALWAYS comes down to two movies who have been favored over the award season from the Golden Globes, to the British Oscars, and everything in between. And if the "wrong" movie wins, it's usually because it was the "safer" movie for political reasons. Yes, ten spots for Best Picture does get worthy movies into the category that may have gotten overlooked with only five slots, but some are just filler spots, and are no real threat to actually winning the award. In the end, ten spots works when your memberships are in the thousands, but not the hundreds.

"Just once I want my life to be like an 80's movie ... but, no, no. John Hughes did not direct my life." ("Easy A", 2010)

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